The Mallen Girl

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘No, thank you, Mary, I can stay put too. You brought an extra cup, I see.’

  ‘Oh, aye. Knowin’ you never say no to tea I came prepared.’

  After she had poured out two more cups of tea she took hers and sat in a basket chair at the head of the bed, almost on a level with Barbara herself, and Dan resumed his seat on the edge of the bed and spoke to Barbara, saying jocularly, ‘She makes a good cup of tea, I’ll say that for her, if she can do nothing else.’ Mary, talking between gulping from her cup, said, ‘Good cup of tea indeed! And I say what I’ve said afore, ’tisn’t seemly you sittin’ on the bed, Mr Dan, ’tisn’t right, ’tisn’t right or proper. Yet’—she took another gulp of tea—‘what does it matter. As I said to meself earlier on, what does it matter, what does anything matter. Aye, I felt awful in the town the day, Mr Dan. I’ve said nothin’ to Miss about it, but eeh! I felt awful.’

  Dan cast a look in Mary’s direction, and he knew from the tone of her voice that what she had to say wasn’t for Barbara’s eyes, and as if it even might reach Barbara’s ears her voice was low as she continued, ‘Saw young Sarah I did, went slap into her. There she was, crutch an’ all. Eeh! it was a shock seein’ her like that. I knew she had lost her leg, but it was different, different seein’ her with just one leg and a crutch, and he was with her, Michael, an’ they looked happy enough. But…but I was cut to the bone, ’cos you know what, Mr Dan? They passed me as if they didn’t know me. I could have touched them by just puttin’ me hand out, but they both passed me as if they had never seen me afore in their life. Eeh! I was cut up. I did a bit of a cry when I got on the cart. Ben Taggert said they were married last Saturday and…’

  It was almost as if an explosion had thrown him off the side of the bed. The cup went spinning from his hand and Barbara’s tea came on to his face and neck; then the scream that she emitted almost brought his hands from his scalded flesh to block out the sound from his ears. The next minute he was struggling with her, trying to hold her down while her screams, mixed with Mary’s cries, seemed to shatter the walls of the room.

  It seemed only seconds before Miss Brigmore’s hands were entangled with his own, and also those of his father.

  As quickly as Barbara’s screaming had begun so it ended and brought them all into a huddle in the middle of the bed, and from their several contorted positions, they gazed in alarm at the limp figure, thinking that now she really had died.

  It was Harry at this point who took command of things, saying, ‘Come on then; come on then; get her up on to her pillows. It’s all right; she’s just passed out; her heart’s still going. What was it all about?’ He turned an accusing gaze on Dan, who from the other side of the bed and still gasping said, ‘You…you know as much about it as me.’

  Having settled Barbara more comfortably against the pillows, and covered her discreetly once more with the bedclothes, Miss Brigmore looked from Dan to Mary and asked in a murmur, ‘What…what upset her?’

  Again Dan answered, ‘I don’t know. No-one, nobody.’

  ‘You…you weren’t talking to her about anything in…in particular?’

  ‘No, I was just sitting on the bed like this’—he demonstrated—‘facing her and…Mary, Mary was sitting there. She…she was telling me…’ He stopped, and now Mary and he stared at each other. Then he moved his head, saying, ‘But she couldn’t! She couldn’t have heard you from there.’

  ‘Heard what?’ Miss Brigmore’s voice had the old ring to it as she confronted Mary, and Mary, with a defiant movement of her head, now said, ‘She couldn’t have heard; I was dead level with her, or behind her, like this.’ She now demonstrated how she had been sitting when she was talking.

  Miss Brigmore, still with her gaze intently bent on Mary, asked slowly, ‘What were you talking about?’

  Mary turned her head to the side. There was a look of defiance on her face now and she did not answer until Miss Brigmore said again, ‘Well, I’m waiting.’

  ‘I…I just said I’d seen them, Sarah and him, in the town and…and she was using her crutch and’—her voice sank low—‘I said Ben Taggert had told me they had been married a week gone.’ She faced Miss Brigmore again. ‘She couldn’t have read my mouth ’cos she couldn’t see me, an’ I talked low, right low. I…had to tell somebody; I couldn’t tell you, so I told Mr Dan there ’cos I was upset like, ’cos they cut me dead as if they’d never seen me afore. It was natural I was upset.’

  Miss Brigmore stood perfectly still as she stared back at Mary. After a moment she turned slowly about and looked at the white mask-like face sunk in the pillows; then she brought her gaze to Dan and asked quietly, ‘Do you think she could have read Mary’s lips?’

  ‘No, definitely no, not from the way she was lying. And…and she was looking at me. The only way she could have taken in what was being said was if she could hear…’

  Now Miss Brigmore looked at Harry, who a moment ago had turned from the bed, and she asked, ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Well’—he rubbed his hand hard over his mouth before saying—‘from what I gather she threw that fit because of what she heard Mary say, an’ she could have only heard what Mary said if she had got her hearin’ back. It looks as though when she lost one sense she gained the other. It seems far-fetched but that’s the way I see it at the moment. We’ll have to see what line she takes when she comes round. Look, she’s moving now…’

  Barbara was moving. She was fighting her way up through layers of blackness. There was no substance to the blackness. As she grabbed at it, it melted through her fingers like mist, and as she breathed it, it blocked her throat as if she were trying to swallow wool, and it weighed on her as if blanket after blanket were piled on her body. It was when she was feeling she could struggle no more that she saw a glimmer of light. It became stronger, like the dawn seeping through the curtains, and the nearer she got toward it the brighter it became, and the nearer she got toward it the more fearful she became, for now she had a desperate urge to fall back into the blackness out of which she was emerging, for a voice was screaming through her head, ‘We’ll have to see what line she takes when she comes around. We will have to see what line she takes when she comes round. We will have to see what line she takes when she comes round.’

  She had heard every word that had been spoken in the room since she had regained consciousness that long, long time ago. When at first she had tried to tell them that she could hear and there was no longer any necessity for them to mouth their words at her, or contort their fingers into languages, she had found she was unable to do so. But what did it matter anyway? She was dead.

  When she had jumped down from the trap she had run wildly through the dusk to meet death. Reaching the river she had determined to lie in it and bring her dying to quick finality. But when she fell forward it was on to rock, and the water just flowed gently over her. It wasn’t until she dragged herself up and went toward the middle and found the mud sucking her down that, in spite of what her mind was telling her, her body automatically struggled until she freed herself.

  She ran no more after that, she just walked and stumbled and fell, and rose again, and repeated this as she mounted the hills. The twilight had almost gone when she came across the workings and, falling into its shelter, she lay down and began the process of dying. But it was long in coming, as sleep was, and she lay shivering well into the night.

  When she awoke the daylight was streaming through the entrance and her body felt hot and she wanted a drink, above all things she wanted a drink. She slept fitfully all day and the last time her eyes opened it was into terrifying blackness and to the sound of someone calling her name. The voice came from a great distance, ‘Bar…bara! Bar…bara!’ it said, and she answered, ‘I’m coming,’ and as she closed her eyes she knew it was for the last time.

  The memories after that were dim and confused. A man was holding her in his arms as a lover would hold her, but it wasn’t Michael. Then she seemed to sleep for an eternity, and when at l
ast she awoke she knew that in a way she had got her wish and she had died, for there was no desire in her either to move or to speak. So she didn’t move or speak but lay through aeons of time listening, and as she listened she knew that everybody was different. None of them were as they had been before, not Brigie or Mary or Dan, particularly Dan, Dan was quite different; Dan had turned into a lover. If she hadn’t died she would have laughed at the absurdity of this, but there was no mirth in her for the dead cannot laugh.

  Yet as the eternities passed she found that she could listen to Dan without irritation. His voice was not stiff like Brigie’s, nor chattering like Mary’s, and it wasn’t the voice of the irritating youth, it was the voice of a man, it was deep and warm and kind. It was a large voice, much larger than his body, yet it lay gently on her eardrums. She had been listening to it telling of Katie’s doings in the social field…And then…then came Mary’s prattle saying that Sarah had only one leg and was walking on a crutch. She was already screaming in her head when she heard the words ‘Ben Taggert said they were married last Saturday.’ At that moment the fact that Michael had married Sarah did not seem to matter so much, because she knew that, in a way, he would be forced to do so to compensate for her own act, her vile act of ripping Sarah’s leg off. And through the screaming in her head she heard Jim Waite’s voice screaming at her again, ‘You’re a devil! You’re a bastard! You’ve hated her all your life.’

  She knew she was a devil, and a bastard, and she had hated Sarah all her life. Yet at the present moment there was no hate left in her, not even for her Aunt Constance. The void that the deafness had created was lost in a greater void, for now she could not feel emotion of any kind. She did not hate, she did not love, they were emotions that belonged to another life, and in her present life, this still life on the bed, she felt she was being born again; she was emerging from the dark world. And her thoughts were new, different; but they did not help her to want to live for they were constantly stressing the fact that she was bad; because she was a Mallen she was bad and she would do less harm if she stayed forever in this half world.

  Faces wove in and out of her vision now, hands touched her and she pushed them away. She didn’t like hands touching her. Her body was burning, she was parched, she was back in the hole on the hillside. She gasped, ‘Water. Water.’

  ‘Yes, dear. Oh yes, dear; here it is.’

  Miss Brigmore supported her head as she gulped at the water.

  ‘Are you feeling better now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Miss Brigmore turned her head away as she now asked, ‘Would you like another drink?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Barbara, Barbara my darling, can you hear?’

  Barbara stared up into Miss Brigmore’s drawn face, but she did not answer her.

  ‘You heard, you heard me speak. Tell me that you can hear. Barbara, Barbara, tell me that you can hear.’

  ‘I can hear.’ The words were flat, unemotional.

  Miss Brigmore turned round quickly, looking for somewhere to sit, and it was Dan who pushed a chair forward, and it seemed only just in time for Miss Brigmore was evidently overcome. Her tightly buttoned bodice swelled and the buttons strained from their moorings. Her whole face was alive with love and wonder as she looked at her beloved child. When she turned her gaze on Harry he smiled at her and nodded reassuringly; then turning to Dan, he said, ‘Come along, lad.’

  Dan stood for a moment looking towards the bed, then turned and followed his father; Mary, the tears raining from her eyes, her apron held to her face, went with them; and Miss Brigmore was left alone with her child, her daughter, her beloved Barbara.

  She leaned forward and with the tips of her fingers gently stroked the hands now joined tightly together on the coverlet, but when they flinched from her touch she also flinched as if she had been stung, and the joy drained from her face as she looked into the eyes now holding hers, and she murmured, ‘Oh! Barbara, Barbara, my dear, what is it? What is it now?’

  What was it now? It was to stop the words which were tumbling about in her mind, leaping bridges of time and yelling, ‘You’re to blame, you’re to blame for all that’s happening. You lived in sin with that man all those years, that fat man whose flesh I am. And…and since I can remember you have made me think I was different, something special, rare; when what you should have done was tell me the truth and let me start life with my feet on the earth instead of my head in the clouds. I see now that the only reason you ever went to the Hall to teach was because you wanted to install me there; you’ve used me as a salve on your frustrated life, you’ve turned me into an expensive doll, not fit to cope with ordinary living. If I had any hate left in me I would hate you, Brigie. What I want to say to you now is, don’t touch me. Don’t come near me, for if I am to live then I must learn to live.’

  On a long intake of breath she checked the leaping words and said slowly, ‘I’m going to get up.’

  ‘Yes, yes, dear; come then.’ Miss Brigmore rose hastily from the chair and went to turn the coverlet back, but Barbara held on to it, and, still slowly, she said, ‘No, I do not want help anymore: I…I am going to get up on my…’

  ‘You can’t get up on your own, dear.’ Miss Brigmore’s voice was quivering now. ‘You’re too weak, you have been in bed for months, you’ll fall.’

  ‘I am going to get up myself, Brigie. I…I will sit in a chair for a while. Would…would you mind leaving me alone?’

  The rusty scythe that had lacerated Sarah’s leg could not have caused her half the pain that Barbara’s words were causing Miss Brigmore. Like poisoned spears they penetrated the stiff correct façade and thrust deep into the desolate creature that lived hidden within her. Nothing that had happened in her life before had had the power to wound her as Barbara’s attitude towards her now. Not the devastation of her comfortable family home brought about by her father’s bankruptcy and imprisonment, which had also caused her mother’s death; no humiliating trials in those first situations as governess; not the fact that Thomas would never give her his name although she had given him everything she had in life; not the shock of his raping Barbara’s mother or the shock of his death by his own hand; not the latest blow that she was to be cut off forever from Constance; none of these things had made her feel as she was feeling at this moment.

  For nineteen years she had devoted her life to this girl, she was the child she had never had. She had been mother, nurse, and governess to her. In the early days she had worn herself out trying to find a cure for her deafness. She had taken on the post of educating the children in the Hall merely in order that Barbara should have advantages that the cottage could not afford. She had allowed her everything, except one thing, the love of Michael, and that she had striven to deny her whenever possible as Constance had done. But it was she alone who was now to bear the blame for it.

  Blindly, she turned about and went out of the room; in her own room she dropped on to her knees by the side of the bed and asked God, Why? Why?

  Eight

  Christmas had come and gone. The Benshams had spent it at the Hall, accompanied by two guests, Miss Pearson and Mrs Florrie Talbot. Harry had hoped that Miss Brigmore and Barbara would join them. When his invitation was politely refused, he went to the cottage and tried coaxing, but to no avail. Losing his temper, he had stormed out saying that living in bloody isolation was going to do nobody any good, and that was the last they would see of him.

  When the rest of the family called en masse to deliver their presents and to wish them all a happy Christmas, Barbara absented herself; the only one of them Barbara still continued to talk to was Dan…

  January was a bitter month. The roads became impassable and there were drifts of snow twelve feet deep. Sheep were frozen to death, and when there was a sudden thaw toward the end of the month, Ben Taggert’s horse and cart got bogged down in a ditch. It took ten men to lever them out and after such an experience, the horse was no further good and Ben reluctantly let it go to the
knacker’s yard; nor was he himself the same afterwards.

  When it froze again the roads became more treacherous than when covered with the thick snow, and no human nor animal could be sure of a footing on them. The navvies kept the railway lines clear, and the trains still ran, if not on time, but the carriage could not get from the Hall to the station, and no-one but a madman would have attempted to walk the distance.

  So when a madman, so rimed with frost that he appeared like a ghost, thrust open the studded door and walked through the vestibule into the lamp-lighted hall, two maids coming slowly down the stairs checked their laughter and gave a high concerted scream before running back up again.

  There was no sight of any manservant, and Dan slowly made his way across the hall toward the drawing room. He did not attempt to unbutton his coat because he could not feel his fingers inside his gloves. When he thrust open the drawing-room door he was met with similar reactions, but without the squeals, as Brooks, Armstrong, and Emerson drew their outstretched legs and stockinged feet sharply upwards and scrambled from where they had been reclining on the couch in front of the fire.

  ‘Why…why, Mr Dan! Where you sprung from?’

  ‘Manchester.’ Dan’s voice was as cold as his body. He stared from one to the other of the men, then deliberately lowered his gaze to the table at the side of the couch on which stood two decanters and three glasses, not wine glasses, but ale glasses which were more than half full of whisky, and he now added grimly, ‘It’s evident when the cat’s away the staff can play. And how they can play! You don’t do things by half, do you?’ He looked at the glasses again. ‘I understood you have a sitting room of your own.’